APPENDIX I. 



Finding that they were fifteen hundred, among 

 which the R, according to him, requires for its 

 formation ten successive contractions of the M. sty- 

 loglossus, he states that in one minute a muscle 

 may contract and relax fifteen thousand times, and 

 as the relaxing lasts as long as the contracting, each 

 contraction would have lasted only 8o ^ 00 of a 

 minute, or -^ of a second. Hence Haller argues 

 that the nervous agent requires -^^ of a second 

 for travelling from the brain to the M. styloglossus, 

 say a distance of about four inches, which makes 

 about 160 feet in one second. Now this result is 

 not a little remarkable. In Haller's reasoning 

 every single step is erroneous, and the whole rests 

 on a perfectly absurd basis. Nevertheless, the 

 result to which Haller has thus been led wonder- 

 fully coincides with that which has recently been 

 arrived at by the methods which it is the object of 

 this lecture to explain; so that in this case the 

 JSneid really has proved a book of oracles.* 



John Miiller, of Berlin, hardly seventeen years 

 ago, used in his lectures to dwell upon the apparent 

 impossibility of ever solving the problem under 

 consideration, on account of the enormous rate of 

 propagation, comparable to that of light and elec- 

 tricity, which he ascribed to the nervous agent, 

 while the small compass of the animal body did not 

 offer sufficient range for its measurement.! 



* Haller, Elementa Physiologiae Corporis humani. Tom. iv. 

 Lausann, 1762. 4. Pp. 373, 483. 



f Handbuch der Physiologic des Menschen, u. s. w. Bel. i., 

 ' 4 Aufl. Coblenz, 1844. S. 581. 



